Mobile Payments and Our Neighbors to the North

This week BS&T will be examining the development of the mobile payments market in Ontario, Canada, and looking for lessons that could apply to the U.S. market.

Mobile payments is getting to be a big deal in Ontario, Canada -- at least big enough that the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development wants people to know about all the work going into mobile payments here in Ontario. I’ll be participating in a media tour offered by the ministry over the next few days to see the development of mobile payments in Ontario. Banks, card companies, telcos and others will explain how they are contributing to that development here.

Canada already has a jump start on building a truly functional and universal mobile payments ecosystem compared to the U.S. The country has much higher adoption of NFC terminals among merchants, and has also seen some more collaboration among different organizations in mobile payments solutions, leading to a less fragmented market. For instance, when CIBC released its NFC-based mobile payments app last year, it did so in partnership with Rogers, one of the country’s biggest telcos.

Over the course of the week I’ll be posting stories on BS&T about the mobile payments market here in Ontario, the efforts that financial services and technology companies are making in the market and what kind of benefits they are seeing from those efforts. So stay tuned and please leave your comments below about all things mobile payments and Canada (but no jokes about igloos or polar bears.)

Jonathan Camhi has been an associate editor with Bank Systems & Technology since 2012. He previously worked as a freelance journalist in New York City covering politics, health and immigration, and has a master's degree from the City University of New York's Graduate School ... View Full Bio

It will be enlightening to see what role banks are playing in the m-payments ecosystem. Given that there are fewer banks (compared to US), does that mean they have more leverage because of their size/dominance, or are they also in more of a wait-and-see mode as in the US?